Saturday, August 18, 2012

...His first published novel, The Boats of the Glen Carrig, appeared in 1907 followed by The House on the Borderland in 1908, The Ghost Pirates in 1909 and The Night Land in 1912. Recent criticism has presented the theory that these novels were written in the reverse order of publication which would make The Night Land (a SF masterpiece) as possibly his first novel and The Boats of the Glen Carrig (a combination of adventure and horror) his last novel. Each one of these novels is a remarkable achievement. Together, they form much of Hodgson’s legacy. In The Boats of the Glen Carrig, an adventure on the high sea takes the reader through many supernatural events and ends in WHH’s own infamous Sargasso Sea, a part of the ocean choked by immoveable seaweed and giant sea monsters. The Ghost Pirates chronicles the last voyage of a cursed vessel and the specters that haunt it. In The House on the Borderland, a man finds himself in an isolated house that is besieged by outside forces and features passages of incredibly imaginative science fiction. Hodgson’s masterpiece, The Night Land, presents an Earth in the far future when the sun has burnt out, humanity lives in a giant metal pyramid and there are great evils that walk the land....

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Jessie Warren and his get rich quick schemes made him a source of embarrassment for the whole town of Zebulon, West Virginia. I got no problem tellin’ you and your deputies what I know but don’t try and pretend that you aren’t just a little bit glad that he’s out of your hair for good.

Did I know what he was up to this time? Of course, we were best friends, sworn blood brothers and I got the hepatitis to prove it. I was always the first person he came to when he had one of his money-making ideas. Jessie could always make things sound so simple. Why not make brew moonshine? Why not cook some meth? Why not start selling counterfeit fainting goats?

Now when he first started talking about making porno for the Internet I thought he might be on to something. He said that since I had a camcorder I could be a producer. I was a little interested at first but then things got weird.

We discussed the whole thing over coffee at Ralph’s Diner. See I figured that he’d want to do something normal and wholesome like the Bangbus but in a pickup truck. But oh no, Jessie had other ideas, he wanted to do something called shokushu.

Now I did not know what in the name of God and the sweet baby Jesus a shokushu porno was and when Jessie explained it to me I was sorry I did.

Shokushu is girls gettin’ it on with tentacles...

No, not testicles- tentacles. You know like on an octopus or a squid.

I didn’t believe him but damn if he didn’t have the pictures to prove it. I guess it was a Japanese thing. I don’t know which pictures bothered me more, the girls that didn’t look happy to be getting molested by an octopus or the ones that looked like they were having the time of their lives.

Say what you want about me Sheriff but I didn’t want anything to do with such a thing and that’s what I told Jessie. He spent the better part of fifteen minutes trying to talk me into it. He said he got a girl all lined up, said she was up for anything. I asked him who this girl was and he told me it was Eunice.

Now I gotta admit using Eunice was a stroke of genius. She is one beautiful girl and, ever since that mule kicked her in the head on prom night, gullible as Hell. I still said no and then he tells me he already ordered a freshwater squid from some guy down in New Orleans named Castro.

We all know there ain’t no such thing as a freshwater squid but Jessie didn’t want to hear it. He said he had that Castro guy coming up to his house in a couple of days.

Maybe I could have talked him out of it but right about right then Stella came over to refill our coffee cups. She took one look at those pictures of girls and octopuses and fainted. In the ensuing chaos I went my way and Jessie went his. I’m pretty sure neither of us bothered to pay the bill.

And that brings us up to tonight. It was about two o’clock in the morning when my phone rings and sure enough it was Jessie.

He’s voice is this scared whisper and he says to me, “I can’t find the squid.”

There was a long pause, mainly because I thought I was still dreaming so he spoke again.

“Are you listenin’ to me George? I can’t find the squid. I got up to take a piss and it ain’t in the bathtub no more.”

So then I said, “You bought the squid? You really did it?”

“Sure, it got dropped off this morning. Eunice helped me load it off the old man’s truck. I figured she should get used to touching it you know?”

What else could I say but, “And you put it in your bathtub?”

“It was bigger than I thought. Big as a man. It had green eyes and its skin changed color when it breathed. Eunice didn’t like it, she said she didn’t like the way it looked at her.”

Nothing he said was making sense, but that didn’t stop him-

“After Eunice left I tried to feed it a hamburger but the thing just left it floating there in the tub. Suddenly I felt real tired and went to lie down,” he sobbed a little, “I had these dreams. They were about this city with buildings all crooked and seaweed in the windows. I saw this shadow, then I felt like I was falling. When I woke up it was night time and I could hear it singing. It was coming from the bathroom and it was like nothing I ever heard before.”

A musical freshwater squid? I was speechless.

“I wasn’t scared of that thing in the daylight but now I was too scared to get out of bed. I just listened to it singing and sloshing around. By the time I got the nerve up to actually go and check on it, it was gone.”

At moments like this I always ask, “Jessie? Are you high?”

“Why was it singing? What does the song mean?”

Then he started screaming and there was these wet slobbering sounds and then everything got quiet. “Jessie!” I shouted, “Jessie are you all right?”

And then the part happened that no one believes, the that part makes me sure you’ll never find no trace of my best friend. The part that makes me tell you to drain the pond out in back of the Warren place and don’t let no one go in those woods alone.

This voice came on the line, it was all high pitched and sing-song but it spoke perfect English

There had been bad Tuesdays before but this one was getting worse by the minute. A few of teachers had doubled up Tristam’s homework, telling him he still had to complete Monday’s assignments as well as today’s. That was about four hours of homework, four hours of homework on a night when all he wanted to do was take a hot shower, crawl into bed and just sleep.

But there was no way that was going to happen, because naturally his mother had to work late.

Tristam sat at his mother’s desk with the office door was closed; It made the office stiflingly hot but it kept the living dead from disturbing him. Pencils, paper, textbooks and a can of soda were all within reach. He was doing his Algebra homework now that was the easiest considering how he felt. It came easiest and it always made sense. It was just a matter of using the right formula and a dash of logic. Tristam thought how his sister had been floundering through higher math for years and the most she’d ever managed was a ‘B-’.

I think she peaked with mitten counting in Kindergarten. He thought with a little chuckle.

He seemed to be chuckling to himself a lot lately and why not? He had his very own private joke and the joke was on all of them. The joke was even on his new pals, he tried to share it with them but all they wanted to do was trade nerd jokes.

Fuck’em He thought but he didn’t really mean it. After all if it hadn’t been for them he might have killed himself at the beginning of the semester. By the second week of September he’d started planning and rehearsing the deed in the back of his head, debating razors over pills. At night he would lull himself to sleep by imagining his funeral, imagining how sorry Monique, his sister and the others would be then. Of course he would wonder if his Dad would even show up for or if he would just send a tasteful card and a last minute wreath.

Taking a sip of soda Tristam remembered he’d made a joke about killing himself once and how angry it had made Adelphos. At the time he hadn’t known about Adelphos’ brother, he hadn’t even known Adelphos had a brother.

He looked up at the clock on the, it was almost four thirty and he had about half of yesterday’s homework done. At this rate he was going to be up until midnight.

At this rate I’m going to drop dead of exhaustion!

Would a nap be such a bad thing he wondered? A few moments of rest and then he could stay up however long he needed to. Of course then he would be just as tired all day tomorrow-

The weekend. He thought as he laid his head down on his mother’s desk, I’ll get myself back on a normal schedule this weekend.

Groaning with relief, he began to drift off the moment he closed his eyes. Voices filled his mind, snatches of rambling conversations. Tristam knew he was simply hearing things, as he always did when he was exhausted but there was something about the emptiness of the voices that always disturbed him. It was what he imagined being locked in a madhouse at night must be like.

With each of his breaths the voices receded. Lingering in the darkness between awareness and slumber he felt his tension wash away. He felt lighter, freer. It almost felt as though he was being released from a cage. His flesh sloughed off easily and he was free.

Not again! I just want to sleep!

And with that thought his spirit began to ebb back into his body. There was no pain when he touched his own physical form, only a kind of inner gravity that seemed to grasp desperately at the edges of him. He hadn’t known he could do such a thing but he was grateful for it. There would be plenty of time for spying later.

But the music stopped him before he could fully return to himself. It was strange warbling sound, not quite chiming, not quite whistling. He had heard it before but it had never been so close. Tristam drifted out of the office following his ears, veering around the Carvale Home’s residents and staff. He only heard this music when he was ‘dreaming’ and even then he had always suspected it was some kind of a hallucination. A hallucination within a hallucination- or so he had believed.

But now he knew better; everything else was all real so why not the music?

Tristam paused in front of a closed door, room 302. The music had stopped.

A waste of time. Plus now when I wake up I’ll feel even worse.

Melting through the walls he floated aimlessly around the facility’s central courtyard. The walkway, the trees, benches and picnic tables were all covered with a light film of frozen snow.

If he had substance the snow would have crunched under his feet. Tristam had always loved that sound. He moved past the first floor windows, noticing that most of the rooms were empty. The residents that were capable had all gone to dinner; those that weren’t were in the rooms watching TV.

I’ll never put Mom in a place like this. He thought suddenly, Dad? Dad can be homeless for all I care.

Speaking of his Mom there she was, working on one of the oldsters, a tiny old woman with a face that seemed oddly slack.

Stroke, must be a stroke. He had been coming here long enough to recognize the signs. The old woman had a tray in front of her and his mother was coaching her to use a fork and feed herself. It was like watching a baby try to eat. His mother did all kinds of things to help her patients, from physical exercises to jigsaw puzzles. It seemed to Tristam that half the exercises she came up with were straight out of day care.

It’s like at eighty years old you have to start all over again. What’s the point? He wondered. What would you say Greg? That this woman’s misery was part of God’s great and secret plan? This is the truth here. This is all any of us have to look forward to, if we’re lucky.

Easing into the room he watched his mother work, he wondered to himself if any of the things she did ever really helped. Weren’t these people at death’s door anyway?

There was a flush, the bathroom door swung open. Phil Dowd stepped out and asked, “Did I miss anything?”

Phil walked over and kissed the old woman on the head, “That’s my girl. We’ll get you outta here yet.”

Lucille smiled unevenly.

Enough of this. If I’m gonna wake up in agony I may as well enjoy it. He had a good idea where some of the girls from school lived, if he timed things right he might see that Venezuelan girl student in a way Warren could only dream about.

But first things first. Tristam hovered close to Phil Dowd and gave him the finger, then he thought better of it and gave him both fingers. That done he lifted off. Snowy clouds hung heavy in the sky; he skimmed just below them as he got his bearings.

Halfway to his goal he was yanked backwards with sickening force. Tristam couldn’t stop himself as he fell back to Earth. Pain wracked him, worse pain then he felt when he passed though a person, worse pain then anything he had ever felt in his life.

Tristam snapped back into his body feeling disoriented and nauseous. Phil Dowd was standing over him. His hands were around Tristam’s throat. Blood roared in Tristam’s ears, his eyes were watering. Wheezing and gasping he struggled to pry the old man’s fingers away.

In This Twilight

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About Me

Al Bruno III is a writer of comedy and horror with over twenty years experience crafting stories that are as unforgettable as they are strange. Or then again, maybe he's just another unpublished author with a blog.